


primum non nocere

by Mythopoeia



Series: All That Glitters: Gold Rush!AU [90]
Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: 1800s AU, 1800s medicine, And now he has to grow up, And thank goodness for Finrod, Angst, Fingolfin and co.’s road is Even Longer, Fingolfin is Best, Fingon is 20 and a medical student, Gen, Gold Rush AU, Medical Procedures, Remember Ulmo’s Bridge?, The Feanorians took a long road West, Title card: MEANWHILE, Yep we back there.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-05
Updated: 2020-01-22
Packaged: 2020-04-08 12:32:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 19,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19107172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mythopoeia/pseuds/Mythopoeia
Summary: Fingon does not think about Maedhros, and about how he once explained the workings of his new weapon to him, letting Fingon hold the handsome revolver long enough to be startled by its weight. A beautiful piece, the Colt Walker, but beneath the elegant facade and pleasing shape: a monster.(Fingon does not think about Maedhros.)





	1. Chapter 1

_Seven men. Seven bullets._

_So the story goes._

*

“Are you certain?” Fingon asks weakly, for what feels like the dozenth time, wiping sweat from his brow with the back of his dust-stained shirtsleeve. It is uncommonly warm, and humid too, even for July, and the heat makes the oppressive air of the sickroom nearly unbearable. Even with his collar opened, and his shirtsleeves rolled up past his elbows, Fingon feels he can scarcely breathe.

“Aye, sir,” replies the young man who is standing close beside him, looking morose as he stares down at the unconscious man in the sickbed. The boy’s name is Henrik; he is a very young man, and not precisely friendly, but when Finrod begged that Fingon be permitted to attend the wounded who survived the bridge, he was the only one of the Teleri willing to accept the help. 

_(I do not demand miracles, Fingon, only that you do what you can,_ Finrod had whispered quickly, his eyes pleading as he helped Fingon hastily gather up his kit from the luggage rack of their third coach. Fingon, hands trembling, had only nodded, unable to trust his voice. Unable to trust his _hands_ , even, for yes he has accompanied Doctor Olorin on many calls around New York City, and yes he has aided at many sickbeds and even deathbeds, and yes he has even seen a gunshot wound, once before, but this—)

_(How can Finrod trust him, with this?)_

*

_“I go with him,” Turgon said sharply, shoving the carriage door open. His—wife, good God, even now Fingon could scarcely remember that this yellow-haired girl is his sister-in-law—clutched at Turgon’s coatsleeve, but he removed her hand firmly, if not ungently. When the head constable scowled, Turgon scowled back, an expression familiar from all his years of prickly childhood and even surlier adolescence. He held up his hands, both of them empty._

_“I am unarmed; search me if you like. But so is my brother, and I’ll be damned if I let him go alone.”_

_“Turgon,” Fingon protested, finally finding his voice, weak as it was. But the constable looked to Finrod, who still stood at the head of their group, his hands raised palm out, his face placid if very pale._

_“You vouch for them?”_

_“I do,” Finrod answered steadily, and he did not flinch as the man took one step closer, eyes narrowed. Instead, he looked to Fingon and smiled, gentle and reassuring._

_“My cousin Fingon is the best doctor I know.”_

*

The boy Henrik is taller than Fingon though he looks maybe five years younger than him, and his hair is so blond it is almost white, cut shaggy around his ears. Once he has checked the sick man’s temperature and measured his pulse, Fingon asks Henrik to draw fresh water and bring fresh linens, and the boy goes without protest, leaving Fingon free to make further examination of the patient without having Henrik there to watch. This man is his father, the boy had explained to Fingon as he led the way through the narrow streets of Ulmo’s Bridge: His father, a hale, sun-browned man of forty-three, with hair like corn silk and fishhook scars on his fingertips, lying now still as death on a straw-stuffed pallet, a bullet-wound festering in his arm.

_(A bullet, from the chamber of a Colt Walker, from the steady hand of—)_

Fingon swallows, sniffs, and bends close to his work again, cutting open the linen bandage tied tightly around Henrik the elder’s left forearm, and over his shoulder where he had been standing protectively Turgon leans in too. 

*

_“Nonsense,” is what Fingon had immediately said, blankly, which was probably not the wisest argument to make, when one is staring down the barrels of no less than a dozen revolvers. There were a few rusty hunting rifles among the mob as well, and even some fishing spears, and boat hooks—anything that could serve as a weapon, in this peaceful place. Fingon thought he even saw one old man carrying an actual musket, its bayonet slightly crooked, tarnished and battered enough it might have seen combat in the Revolutionary War._

_That these people were frightened was clear. That they were angry, was even more easily evident. But the reason they gave—_

*

“A single bullet did that?” Turgon asks, looking a little green. Fingon nods, and his brother pulls back, swallowing hard. “Good God,” he says hoarsely. 

The bullet, which had been removed already prior to their arrival in town, lies on a folded handkerchief on the bedside table. Fingon picks it up gingerly, and it rolls in the hollow of his palm, its casing blown, the expanded shape horribly familiar.

“A Colt fired this shot,” he explains in a reasonable approximation of his _Doctoring Voice_ , as Irissë likes to term it. He does not think about Maedhros, and about how he once explained the workings of his new weapon to him, letting Fingon hold the handsome revolver long enough to be startled by its weight. A beautiful piece, the Colt Walker, but beneath the elegant facade and pleasing shape: a monster. 

(Fingon does not think about Maedhros.) 

“It’s a new sort of gun. Deadlier. The impact is enough to break bone, as you see, and the expanding shot can cause immense bleeding. This man was lucky that no arteries were severed.”

The unhealthy sick tinge has not left Turgon’s cheeks when he rasps: “Our Uncle owned that make of gun, didn’t he.”

There is no point in lying: “Yes.”

“And all our cousins, all our damned cousins—“

(Don’t think about that weight in your palm, your wrist, of the amusement coaxing out the dimples of his smile as he took the gun back from you, holding it easily with his long hands, strong-fingered, and then raising it smoothly to aim for the painted target two hundred feet away—)

“Yes.”

“Oh my God,” Turgon says, sagging back against the wall and running both hands distractedly back through his stiff dark hair. “They really did it, didn’t they. It was really them.”

Fingon sets the bullet carefully back on the handkerchief, unable to meet his brother’s eyes. “If they did,” he replies, “they must have had reason. There must have been some misunderstanding, or—“ He knows he is shamefaced before he can even finish the thought, and Turgon looks at him with disgust.   

“Anyway, do not speak of it, when the boy comes back,” Fingon finishes lamely, reaching for his bag. “Until we know what Finrod is saying, and what they are telling him, we should not draw any conclusions that they can hear.”

“We are not _drawing conclusions_ ,” Turgon says bitterly. “It is the _truth._ ”

And what can Fingon say to that? 

(Nothing. Nothing at all.)

*

“A Naomh-Mhuire, a Mháthair Dé,  
guigh orainn na peacaigh, anois,  
agus ar uair ár mbáis.”

_Fingon does not know his Gaelic; haltingly he stumbles along through the prayer, feeling increasingly tongue-tied and wrong-footed. Uncle Feanor had offered, very pointedly, to allow Fingon to decline to attend the Feanorian family rosaries, but Fingon is stubborn at thirteen and had refused to back down from a challenge. He almost begins to regret his rashness, however, as first Celegorm and then even the tiny Ambarussa begin to smirk behind their prayerfully clasped hands when he butchers yet another pronounciation of ár nAthair._

_“Fingon,” Uncle Feanor says in the pause between one decade and the next, “as our guest, why don’t you lead us in the next decade?”_

_Fingon feels the blood drain from his face and then rush back in a hot flush of embarrassment. His uncle is not even looking at him, and Aunt Nerdanel does not seem to realize anything is amiss. But Celegorm snickers, and Fingon, frozen, cannot even think of what to reply when suddenly there is a light touch on his shoulder._

_It is cousin Maedhros, already looking so grown up and splendid at sixteen. He smiles, warm and cheering, and nudges Fingon’s shoulder gently with his elbow._

_“No need to be shy, Fingon, we are all friends here,” he says. “How about you and I lead together?”_

_Fingon gulps back his self-control from the verge of anxious, angry tears, and nods. Maedhros’ friendliness is one kind of comfort; Celegorm’s murderous look of jealousy, shot venomously when Aunt Nerdanel isn’t looking, is another._

_Maedhros’ voice is clear and melodic, musical like Maglor’s but lighter, not as resonant. From his mouth, Gaelic sounds like a song._

_When he is speaking, no one notices Fingon’s mistakes._

_Not even Fingon._

*

Henrik returns in a rush, water slopping over the sides of the bucket he is hauling and the clean linen looking a little too much like a finely embroidered pillowcase, white and pristine. Fingon bids Turgon help by cutting the cloth into strips, and accepts the water with a smile of gratitude that the boy does not return. Henrik folds himself tightly into the only other chair in the small bedroom, reminding Fingon of how Celegorm’s dog looked, three years ago, when Celegorm broke his wrist falling from a tree.

“You are young to be a constable,” Fingon says as he takes the scissors from Turgon—who has scarcely begun at his task, being too distracted with sneaking horrified glances at the exposed bullet-wound—and begins cutting bandages himself. Keeping his hands busy helps ward off his threatening panic; keeping Henrik talking helps keep him from _remembering._

“I’m not really an officer. Most of us are not, here. My father is part of the militia, and he owns two pistols, so when Constable Johan came to the door saying the Mayor needed twenty men, it seemed sensible that I—Doctor, we did not think there would be fighting,” Henrik whispers plaintively, his nervous hands going to his hair, raking it back in a way that reminds Fingon, with a sickening swoop of familiarity, of—

“Constable Johan,” Fingon prompts in desperation. “Is he—the man who greeted us, at the outskirts of town?”

Henrik shakes his head dully.

“Johan was killed first,” he quavers. “His brother Michael is in charge, now. He was the one who ordered us to run, because—because so many were dead, sir. We were outmatched, and surprised, and their guns could fire without reloading. But my—my father said he would not be made a coward, and stood his ground to aim for their leader, and so the tall one shot him. Shot the gun from his hand, god _damn_ —“ 

The boy’s voice catches, and he buries his face in his drawn up knees, sitting huddled in his chair like a child much younger than he is. 

“By _their leader_ , I suppose you mean my uncle Feanor,” Fingon manages to say, through numb lips, and the boy nods without lifting his head. Fingon knows what he must ask next, too, but he hesitates.

Most of his cousins are tall, to be fair, but still he is too much a coward—

“The tall man’s name was Maitimo,” Henrik mumbles, anticipating the question. “I heard him called so, the day before, when they met with Master Losgar about the wagons.”

*

_“Why do they call you Maitimo?” Fingon asks, hauling another log up onto the chopping block and stepping back carefully, wiping his brow with the back of one of his scratchy, borrowed mittens. Maedhros, his nose already red from the cold, flushes a little self-consciously as he hefts the axe._

_“Oh,” he says, “it is only my mother’s pet name for me. It caught on at home, somehow.”_

_“I never hear Maglor use it in the city.”_

_“You wouldn’t. It isn’t exactly—professional.”_

_Maedhros swings the axe in a long, clean arc, and easily chops the wood in half, the hollow sound of its splitting resonating like a bell off the piled snow. Fingon darts forward to collect the pieces, and to replace them with a new log._

_“Well,” he declares between puffing for breath, “I like it. I will call you Maitimo as well, if you don’t mind. But you can still call me Fingon.”_

_Maedhros smiles often, and laughs often, here at Formenos, but Fingon loves these smiles best: the ones that look like they were waiting to be surprised from hiding, small and bright and quickly stifled._

_“I would like that immensely,” Maedhros says._

*

There is an awful silence in the sickroom, broken only when Turgon slams his fist furiously against the back of Fingon’s chair, and buries his face in his hands, and—

“ _Fuck_ ,” says Turgon, low and shaking.

Fingon takes a deep breath, and holds it, trying to count the seconds as his lungs begin to burn, emptying out his thoughts. Let him—let him examine the room a moment, instead of the wounded man lying at his mercy, instead of the boy who is so afraid, instead of Turgon, who is also afraid, though he hides it with his anger—Instead of the bullet on the white cloth, and the gun which—

The room, look at the room. It is a small bedroom, but not unpleasant, papered expensively with Grecian images much like Fingon’s own home was, and with an unusually large window that opens out to a beautiful view of the river, sparkling and murky green and impossibly wide. If Fingon looks out, he can see the broken posts, the piles of black charcoal pushed up on the riverbanks, the small crosses jutting out of the grass and beaten path to mark the places where men died. 

Fourteen men. But seven of them, seven killed instantly by—

“Oh damn,” he exclaims, tossing the scissors down on the tabletop rather more emphatically than he meant to. Henrik, who had jumped in his chair at Turgon’s outburst, jumps again, and looks at Fingon with wide, nervous eyes. He escaped from the massacre unscathed, which is miraculous considering he stayed behind alone to drag his wounded father to safety, and Fingon realizes he is thinking _This could be a good sign_ , because of course Maitimo would never shoot at a boy, and certainly not a boy unarmed and protecting his father; these people were Maitimo’s enemies, somehow, and those he killed he must have killed for a reason, but _he still had mercy, he let this tow-headed boy live, he—he_ allowed _them both to—_

Fingon bites his lip, disgusted with himself.

“Doctor,” Henrik ventures timidly, wringing his hands on his lap: “Is my father going to live?”

The wounded man in the bed does not wake when Fingon touches him again, one hand feeling the man’s brow and the other the skin near his injury, but he does groan quietly, deep in his throat. Fingon palpitates the flesh around the bullet-hole, trying to focus, and sniffs the dressing he peeled away from the wound. It does not smell like sickness, yet, nor is there any visible pus in the wound, but the man’s skin is too warm, and the wound itself is red and inflamed. Fingon washes his hands with lye soap in the bucket of water, and wipes them clean as he can on his crumpled handkerchief. He washes the injury, too, and rebandages it more tightly, with the new linen. During the entire process, Henrik is silent, watchful as a cat, curled up in himself.

Finally, Fingon leans back in his chair, and begins rolling his shirtsleeves back down to a respectable length as he turns to face the anxious boy.

“Look here, Henrik—I am sorry, frightfully sorry, but I don’t know that I can save the hand. It would be safer by far to amputate, before the infection worsens.”

The boy stares at him.

“Amputate?” He repeats, thinly. Fingon nods, careful not to break eye contact with the boy, no matter how he wants to.

“It is a safe procedure, if done correctly,” he explains. “And if I do it now, he would only have to lose everything below the elbow, not the entire arm. I can stay in town long enough to tend to him afterwards, if your mayor permits, and once he is past danger from infection he will heal quickly. I’ve helped with such an operation before, so you need not fear on that count. I take good care of my instruments, and you have kept the room clean enough. All I need is an assistant to have my needle threaded and ready, for when I must sew the wound closed, and two men, I think, to hold him stil. Unless there is an apothecary you know of nearby who might carry sulphuric ether; then only one might suffice.”

He can scarcely recognize his own voice, which sounds so clinical and confident, while he feels at the same time the thunderous rate of his pulse, and the shaking in his knees. Henrik, listening, grows increasingly pale, until he looks in danger of fainting.

“He cannot lose his hand,” Henrik says, at last, in a very small voice. “How can he—How could he make a living, with one hand?”

He is very young.

“Do you have a mother I could speak to?” Fingon asks, trying to think, through the buzzing in his mind, of what Doctor Olorin would say. “Or any other relative, who might wish to—“

Henrik shakes his head.

“No, sir. No, it’s just him and me.”

And he looks at his father, and worries at his lower lip as though it might keep him from crying, as though the pain might keep him _brave_ , and Fingon can’t—

He simply _can’t._

“It is, of course, your decision,” he stammers, shoving his scissors and stethoscope into his bag haphazardly and standing so quickly he nearly trips over his own feet. “If you need time to consider, take the rest of the evening, and tonight as well. I shall return on the morrow and will check your father’s condition, and in the meantime you may find me—well, wherever the rest of my family are, I suppose. If anything changes, anything at all, come find me. I will help. I promise I will—help.” 

He bows, and fumbles for his hat, and leaves the room without a backward glance, and hears more than sees Turgon hastening after him. 

*

In the dark of the stairwell, Fingon feels his arm seized from behind, and Turgon whispers fiercely in his ear.

“Would you really cut that man’s arm off?”

“If I don’t,” Fingon whispers back, shaking him away, “He will very likely die.”

“You cannot know that. How can you know that?”

“I can know it, Turgon, because I have spent all these last five years studying medicine, and that is the sort of thing one _learns,_ when one spends all their waking hours training to be a doctor.”

“But you aren’t—” Turgon begins, on instinct, and then he stops as suddenly as if Fingon had struck him. 

Instead, Fingon feels as though _he_ is the one struck—and yet this is not so great a surprise, for his family has made small secret of their disappointment in his choice of schooling, since he dropped out of college for a more practical course of study. Turgon has never even met Doctor Olorin— _and likely never will,_ Fingon realizes, as he descends the last two steps and reaches for the door to the landing. He wrenches it open; late sunlight is cutting low across the earth, and blinds him with molten gold. He raises one hand to shield his eyes, blinking in the glare.

The truth only stings _because_ it is the truth: Fingon is not, in the eyes of the law and of his family, a proper doctor. Certainly Fingon has the training required for the profession, and Maedhros had always assured him he had the heart for it, but he has no credentials, no letters of recommendation, no institute to vouch for his skills. He has not even officially sworn the Hippocratic Oath, for when he brought up the subject to his mentor, Doctor Olorin had only shaken his head, and paused a moment in rummaging for his tobacco pouch to regard Fingon cannily.

_(“I do not much hold with oaths,” Doctor Olorin had told him in his wry, kindly way, pulling a little at his tidy grey beard. “And in any case, Fingon, I would not ask you to swear to follow anything except your own good judgement.”)_

“Fingon?” Turgon ventures, sounding apologetic.

_My own good judgement,_ Fingon thinks with abject bitterness, and slams the door shut behind him.

*

_“If taking that oath is so damn important to you,” Maitimo says, setting his wineglass aside, “then why don’t you swear it now?”_

_Fingon stares up at him with swimming eyes, over-warm and muzzy. He sniffs once._

_“What? To you?”_

_“If you like,” Maitimo laughs, pushing back his chair. “And if you do not mind the blasphemy. But at the very least I can witness.”_

*

It occurs to Fingon, once he is standing in the street with his brother and his hat and no idea where to go, that perhaps Henrik was not supposed to let him leave unaccompanied. Still, there is no sign of the boy running to catch up with him, so he starts walking aimlessly, certain someone will accost him eventually, and after that the decision of where to go will be taken out of his hands. 

He wants his mother, that he might unburden his grief to her; he wants his father, to steady him with counsel; he wants Finrod, to make his heart lighter, and he wants Maedhros, to—

Oh, God.

_Seven men, seven bullets_. Fingon knows how quick a shot Maedhros is, and how accurate. Who else taught him his own first giddy lessons in marksmanship, during that Christmas at Formenos so long ago? They shot at targets of painted straw, then, but he cannot help but imagine men’s heads in those places now, seven faces in a line, each blown apart in a mess of blood as Maedhros hits his target. Fingon can remember exactly what it looks like, when his cousin shoots: jaw tense, hands relaxed, his bright eyes keen and hard and metal-grey. Then the roar of the gun, and the sharp recoil, and the burst of black smoke rising up, bitter and acrid—and Maitimo turning, flushed and smiling, to receive Fingon’s exclamations of admiration.

Fingon‘s steps falter, and he sways, putting one hand out blindly for a support that isn’t there. Except—there is Turgon’s hand, suddenly, gripping his, and Fingon swallows back his sudden retching and breathes harshly through his nose.

“Fingon, where are we going?” Turgon hisses, concern pinching at his brow like anger would. “We should head back to where we left the others, come along—shush, come now—“

Turgon takes the lead and Fingon follows obediently, feeling like he is walking in a dream. They wind back through the narrow streets, with purpose now, and it is very close to sunset when they emerge into the relative open space of the central square, which is wide and clean and lined with trees. In the very center is a mosaic design worked into the paving stones with slate and white chalk, of fishes and waves and curling clouds. Bordering the square is a livery, a tavern, and what looks like a double-storied inn, in whose shadow Fingon can make out the shapes of his family’s wagons, huddled like lost sheep.

“There!” Turgon exclaims in relief, and he shoves Fingon forward impatiently, hurrying him across the square. They move so fast that they nearly collide with a group of Teleri emerging from the tavern, but the men are so deep in vigorous conversation they do not even seem to notice Fingon’s poor apology. 

Turgon did not stop to apologize. Turgon is almost to the inn door. Fingon begins to hurry after him, but then—

“—you never shot him,” scoffs a man with a yellow beard, leading the group in jeering at a shorter Teler who has a bandage tied around his upper arm. The bandaged man bristles, jutting out his jaw defensively.

“I tell you I did. Caught him right in the chest, only he didn’t fall. David saw him stagger, didn’t you, David?”

“I couldn’t say,” a third man says with diplomatic calm. “He looked like he was bleeding, maybe, when we ran—but he was still standing for certain, I know that much. Devil take him,” he adds, still calmly, and he spits pragmatically to the side.

“Standing, but with _my_ bullet in him.”

The bearded man sneers, stubborn.

“You’re a damn liar. Not a one of us managed a shot in, and you expect us to believe you shot the redhead, out of all of them? Not one of the _children_ , even, but the goddamn _redhead? I_ never saw any blood.”

“Of course you didn’t, Tom, because you were running so fast, but if it’s blood you want to see I can show you some right now, lad, don’t try—“

Fingon’s whole world goes white and roaring.

Before the Teler has finished his threat—before he even realizes own peril—Fingon has launched at him with a strangled cry, knocking him to the ground, and has slammed his fist squarely into the man’s face.


	2. Chapter 2

_This_ , Fingolfin thinks blankly, when the fisher-people of Alqualonde do not lower their rifles, hemming his family and his people in together with the threat of death— _This is my fault._

The thought is, when examined logically, absurd. Fingolfin has not visited Alqualonde in years, not since Finarfin was still a stripling bachelor, cajoling Fingolfin into a summer holiday spent fishing and swimming and—somehow without Fingolfin noticing—canoodling with the mayor’s eldest daughter.

Their father was so angry, when he found out about that. Fingolfin, however guilty he felt, was never blamed, but he had seen his mother’s distress at covering up the elopement, and he had almost wished his father would scold him for being derelict in duty. 

Feanor, on his rare visit home, had said uncharacteristically nothing on the subject of the scandal but had looked across the gaslit parlor to Indis, and then to Fingolfin, and he had smirked. 

Fingolfin loves his sunny younger brother fiercely, of course, and that protective affection extends to Earwen, who he liked even before he knew of his brother’s romantic interest. The familial conflict over their young, unsanctioned marriage was long ago smoothed over; Finwe, always forgiving, soon buried his hurt and settled into his role as doting father-in-law—and, soon enough, grandfather. 

Still, Fingolfin has never forgotten how it felt, when Feanor had looked so gladdened by his failure—a failure no one else seemed to see. 

No one, except the two of them.

*

“ _Nonsense_ ,” Fingon says—too loudly, too decisively. He tries, instinctively, to stand, and Fingolfin seizes for his son’s wrist, holding him down. When Fingon turns to him, his face is blank as white paper, but his thoughts have always been easy to read. His rising horror is a newspaper headline, printed bold and screaming to draw the eye and sicken the heart: _FOURTEEN MURDERED AT ALQUALONDE—BRIDGE BURNED—FEANOR GONE._

Feanor and _sons_ gone, Fingolfin amends, tightening his hold on his eldest boy and feeling Fingon’s pulse pounding beneath his fingers. 

Fingon’s breathing would not be shaking, his hand would not be shaking, his _head_ would not be shaking, if it was only Feanor who was gone. 

The anguish on his son’s face, as he meets Fingolfin’s eyes—this, too, is Fingolfin’s fault. Does he not know all too well the pain that comes, from loving the wrong relation? Feanor has been nothing but cruel their entire lives together; this last betrayal is only the latest in a long line. And yet, knowing this, Fingolfin let his eldest son befriend Maedhros Feanorian, and when Maedhros made promises—despite his father’s duplicitousness—Fingolfin chose to believe him, for his son’s sake. 

_If you even suspect for a moment that this friendship may someday hurt Fingon_ , Anaire had asked his reflection in her vanity glass years ago, _will you promise to put an end to it?_

He had stood by watching her hair parting dark over her white shoulders; he had seen himself in her mirror, unworthy and yet grateful. Always, these two things. 

He had said: _I will protect our son._

See: how he has failed his wife, and that son, and everyone else who ever trusted his promises, because they trusted him but _he_ trusted—

“Not now,” he tells Fingon tersely, as Finrod—who had been riding, thank God, at the front of their train, eager as he was to see his Grandfather again—begins anew the work of soothing the crowd that roiled a little angrier, hearing Fingon’s protest. “I know you have questions. We all have questions. But for now—quiet.”

“I don’t have questions,” Fingon hissed back, jerking his arm free of Fingolfin’s hold. He is awfully pale, except where a bright angry flush has blazed up high across his cheeks and nose. “He didn’t _do_ it, father. They’re _lying._ ”

“Even if they are lying, they are lying with guns in their hands,” Fingolfin says. “So be silent, and give your cousin time to make inquiries. We will learn what the truth is once things have calmed down, Fingon, but first they _must_ calm. Where is your sister?”

“In the carriage with Turgon.” Fingon wrings his hands together, not seeming to realize he is doing it. “Elenwe was feeling unwell still, this morning, so Mother told Irisse to ride with her.”

That, at least, is a relief. If Turgon is there, Fingolfin can trust he will keep Aredhel from launching into a tirade—or, even worse, a flurry of fists—when she realizes, like Fingon has, what her favorite cousins stand accused of. Murder and worse than murder—murder of _family_. Fingolfin could not believe it of his half-brother, except for the memory of that pistol barrel, a black and unblinking eye, staring at his heart in his father’s house. Feanor’s hand had not shaken, that long moment; his eyes had been unblinking too, steel-bright and mad.

Mad enough to rob and ruin Fingolfin utterly, to murder poor Finrod’s kindred and leave them stranded on the wrong side of a river?

Perhaps.

Fingon draws a deep, shuddering breath, and drops his face into his hands, his elbows pressing sharp into his knees. Fingolfin wishes Anaire were beside him, now, but even this easy journey from New York has exhausted her, and he has urged her to keep inside his own coach, these last few days. Argon is with her, and Galadriel also, whom even deepest affection for Aredhel could not convince to accompany Elenwe. The only reason why Fingolfin is not sitting with her now is because Fingon, ever curious and eager to learn new things, has been using their journey as an opportunity to learn how to drive the carriage himself rather than rely on a servant—a skill that he insists shall be useful, once he sets up his own medical practice. Today was his first time at the reins without Fingolfin’s customary driver sitting beside him to correct his hands, and Fingolfin had wanted to enjoy observing his son demonstrating his new accomplishment. 

(It had been very enjoyable: the rare and precious opportunity to sit alone with his eldest son, and enjoy both the quiet of the road and Fingon’s steady, sober, but bright-spirited company. Fingolfin has grown so accustomed to missing his eldest, since Fingon went to apprentice with Doctor Olorin, that he had almost forgotten what not missing him felt like. He had almost forgotten, too, that his boy is now a man of twenty. Rediscovering his son’s mannerisms and habits, his sense of humor and his delight in both animated conversation and comfortable stillness, had felt such a blessing, today.)

(He had not even minded, really, that he knew Fingon’s high spirits were largely because of the nearness of his reunion with Maedhros.)

“Hold the horses steady,” Fingolfin murmurs, and he stands slowly, his hands open and raised in front of him to show their emptiness. Still, not a few of the rifles and pistols jerk abruptly in his direction. Fingolfin’s heart beats a little faster, but he maintains his composure as he steps down from the box, and moves to stand beside Finrod. 

“Keep them trained upon me, if you must,” Finrod is insisting, his normally mellow voice unusually sharp. “But for God’s sake, do not aim towards the coaches! We have our woman and children inside, among them my younger sister. Surely you do not think a girl of fifteen could mean you any harm—or my invalid aunt, or my young cousins.”

“How young?” One man spits, pale eyes narrowed and hard. “Young as Feanor’s boys were?”

Ambarussa were thirteen, the last time Fingolfin saw them, and they looked younger. Yet Argon always went half in awe of them, as though they were the ones newly fourteen, not him. 

Finrod’s even composure does not falter. 

“Search all our things, if you wish to see for yourselves that we mean no harm, and that I’ve given you the truth. Feanor had all our funds with him, and we were to meet him here and then travel on together. We expected him here today, along with his sons and his wife, none of whom we have had any contact with for weeks. That is all I know.”

Sensing Fingolfin’s approach by the reaction of the men in front of him, Finrod glances quickly to the side, and nods. This close, Fingolfin sees the strain in his nephew’s face. 

“Uncle,” Finrod says in greeting, “how are the others?”

“Distressed,” Fingolfin replies shortly. “But holding steady. Most do not yet know what has happened.”

“You are Feanor’s brother?” Another man accuses. Fingolfin lifts his head. 

“Hardly,” he says. “We shared the same father. Yet in this matter, as in most things, we were little more than business partners.”

The man scoffs, but most in the mob no longer seem openly hostile, instead settled back into an open, volatile wariness. 

“I heard my nephew offer you free access to our possessions and conveyances,” Fingolfin continues. “Will you search us now, or after you allow us off the road? My wife is unwell, and if I must send her ahead alone to find proper lodgings where she might rest out of the sun, I will do so.”

There is ultimately no search. Finrod is disarming enough that most seem satisfied that Fingolfin and his party pose no real threat, and the continued distrust and anger is more directed towards who they are than what they might do. When Finrod explains the details of what exactly Feanor and his sons stand accused of—God have mercy, Devil damn him, _Feanor_ —Fingolfin knows not what shows upon his own face. 

He does not offer these wronged men his apologies, because what use is there, in apologizing for a crime he was no part of? He does offer them, however, his son. Fingon does not move, immediately, when he realizes what he is needed for, but then he calls for a servant to take his position in the driver’s box and begins to make his slow climb down from the high seat, his movements a poor puppetry of his usual deft confidence. Turgon spills out of his coach at that, an unexpected outburst from his surly second son. And yet, somewhere in the awful shameful ache that is his heart, Fingolfin is glad to see the two of them together, so different—indeed, so usually at odds—and yet united in the moment of crisis. Fingon hesitates on the carriage step, his face linen-white as he looks from Turgon to Fingolfin and then to Finrod, who alone of the three of them knows what he is begging for. 

“My cousin Fingon,” Finrod tells the suspicious constable, smiling for the first time with his bloodless lips, and looking back towards Fingon with all the compassion and reassurance Fingolfin has often seen in Finarfin’s gentle smiles, “is the best doctor I know.”

*

Finrod is allowed to help Fingon collect his medical equipment. Fingolfin is allowed to check upon his wife’s current state. He finds her sitting up straight despite the still tell-tale signs of her headache, Argon beside her, their hands clasped together. When she sees him, her lips part as though she would exclaim in relief, but she does not. Instead she releases her son, and reaches out to him, instead, where he has without realizing it extended his hand to her through the carriage door.

“Husband,” Anaire whispers, searching his expression. “What has happened?”

What, indeed?

“I am sorry,” he tells her, and though mindful of how his youngest son watches, it is the first time his voice shakes, and the first time the tears rise, at last, in his hot and dusty eyes.

“I am sorry,” he repeats: “I am betrayed.”

*

_July 29, 1851_

_Dear Brother—_

_First, I offer an assurance: Artanis is indeed with our company, and is in perfect health. I apologize for not realizing she had stowed away until it was far too late to turn back; I had thought to leave her in the care of your kinsman here in Alqualonde and entrust to him the task of returning her home with an escort and apologies of her own. Yet now I find myself at a loss._

_Finarfin, there has been an unfortunate—_

“You are beginning over again?”

Fingolfin looks up from the little writing table, tightening his fist around the smudged sheet he just crumpled in his fingers, before tossing the rejected letter to join its brethren in the corner wastebin. Anaire is still dressed in her traveling things like he is but has unbound and washed her hair—if rinsing it of dust in a shallow basin by the window can be called washing. She is combing it now, standing at the window with the flush of the setting sun blushing red upon her hands and throat. Combing it with her fingers, not with the fine pearl-handled comb Fingolfin bought her as a gift when they were still courting, because they were not allowed to remove any of their trunks or cases from their carriages, when they arrived at last—after an hour of tense uncertainty—at Alqualonde’s public house. It had taken Anaire nearly fainting on their doorstep to finally convince the mustachioed proprietor to allow them indoors. She runs her fingers through the wet strands, now, patient and gentle, and smiles at him tenderly.

“You shall run out of writing paper, and ink, Fingolfin. You know Irisse has already used up most of our stock.”

“Then I shall commandeer Galadriel’s,” Fingolfin replies, and sighs, dropping the pen to the tabletop and resting his eyes a moment.

Fingolfin was able, after coming close enough to begging that his pride still smarts at the recollection, to secure for his family the use of three rooms at the town inn. Galadriel, Aredhel, and Elenwe are currently closeted together in the one closest to his own. He had ordered Argon to remain there with them, at least until Turgon returns. It has been close to two hours, now, since Fingolfin watched his two eldest boys depart for town without him. In the intervening time it has grown increasingly difficult, not easier, for him to keep his mind from straying towards those boys and their return. When he tries to rally his thoughts and resume his letter-writing—for he _must_ be the one to send word of this disaster home to his mother and brother, before any rumors or hysteria can reach them—he cannot think of a single thing to say. 

“You should rest,” Anaire says softly. The bitter sound that escapes him is not quite a laugh, but it is close.

“I could only buy us a roof over our heads, Anaire, by paying twice the rate for the rooms. I am already low on funds; without the money I entrusted to—I ought to help pay restitution to the families of the dead, too, to aid with burials and the orphans left behind. And there is the bridge, too. Thank God I made certain to settle with all my creditors before we left the city, but even so—My dear, in two days we will be utter paupers. I cannot afford to continue westward, or even to pay for the provisions we should need to return to New York. How am I to rest?”

“We have the children’s clothes chests,” replies his wife. “If we are to return to the city, we do not need the winter things they packed—we have our books, our silver, and my linens. Surely even if we sell them for half their value we can earn enough—”

“I am not returning to the city,” says Fingolfin.

Anaire is silent, at that. He turns in his chair, certain he will not be able to bear it if he sees disappointment or judgement in her eyes, but she does not look surprised. 

Instead, she takes the three steps towards him across the tiny, shabby room, the crown of her head nearly touching the low plaster ceiling. Fingolfin has to stoop like an old man to move about the space, as at his full height he is well over a foot too tall. With one hand she caresses the tension gently from his jaw; with the other she combs his own hair back, graying and made more gray than usual by the dust of travel. Or perhaps he really has aged that much, since men with guns stopped him upon the road and demanded to know what business he had in town with Feanor son of Finwe.

“Damn him,” murmurs his wife, the resolute shape of her mouth reminding him suddenly of Fingon. Most men would say the lady Anaire does not swear. Fingolfin alone knows that she does not swear _often_.

“Damn him,” she says, “for what he has done to you.”

(She is not, they both know, speaking only of this latest betrayal.)

In the quiet of the evening, outside the window and below in the street, there is a sudden shout and scuffle of commotion. Fingolfin instantly jolts to his feet, never mind his headache, the fountain pen clattering from the desktop to the floor. But Anaire is too quick for him; his wife was already nearer the window, and she needs to take only a single step to reach the pane. Timidly she reaches for the white-lace curtain, the delicate pattern the ruddy light makes through its weave rippling across her face as she pulls it aside.

She looks down but a moment before she gasps, hands flying to her mouth, the curtain falling back. Fingolfin reaches her, rips the curtain open once more, and sees what she saw: a man lying sprawled on the ground, writhing, and another man over him, pummeling him with ungainly fists, knuckles bloodied even at this distance—and yet more men rushing towards the brawl, men flaxen-haired and booted, men in oilskin fishing coats. Fingolfin does not recognize the man on the ground, but the man standing over him, hat fallen to the ground, doctor’s bag spilled where it dropped upon the stones—

Anaire screams, thin and shrill, as the men nearest to Fingon rush him, and his dark head snaps forward with the impact of a boot slamming into the back of his skull. 

*

Fingolfin does not snatch for his hat, does not draw on his coat; in his stocking feet he races down the inn steps and out into the cobblestoned square, his eyes adjusting poorly to the blinding slant of red sunlight but still seeing instantly, thrashing against the hands that hold him down and spitting curses Fingolfin has overheard from Feanor’s sons on occasion but never, never from—

“Fingon!” 

He sounds harsher than he intended, his voice edged sharp with sudden fear. The authority in his voice makes the brawlers freeze on instinct, looking around to see who the newcomer is; his son stops struggling, and lifts his face. Fingon’s eyes and nose are red; there is a long scratch along the side of his jaw, and a bruise already swelling purple, and blood is seeping from his hair, dripping onto his collar. The man he felled is still on the ground, groaning and clutching at his face.

“I heard them!” Fingon’s voice is high-pitched and unsteady with a rage that Fingolfin has never seen before in his eldest son. With a rage, and with a sudden, absolute terror. 

“They shot Maitimo,” Fingon says, like he can’t believe it. He sounds like a child, and looks like a child, begging for a thing he cannot have. “They _shot_ —“

Fingolfin has never been able to bear his children’s hurting. When Fingon was new born, nothing but a baby shape and a crown of dark hair that slipped mink-fine beneath Fingolfin’s tentative fingers, Anaire had had a slow and difficult recovery from the birth, as her constitution was, even then, a precious, fragile thing. Fingolfin had upon the advice of his parents had a nurse hired, to care for their infant son. But when Fingon cried in the night, Fingolfin could not help creeping out of his own bedroom and down the hall to the nursery, where he would gather his son into his arms and sit in the wooden rocking chair himself, singing and hushing and marveling, every night marveling, at what a wonder his boy was.

It did not help; Fingon was a colicky, fussy child, and if he slept at all those nights it was through crying himself to exhaustion, not due to any comfort Fingolfin gave. _Some children are simply that way_ , the nurse told him one morning, pitying the bleary-eyed young father with the awkward hands and the invalid wife. Fingolfin was sure she was correct, as she was a respected authority on all things to do with child-rearing, and had been hired due to her impeccable credentials and references. And yet, he still felt that somehow, in some undefinable way, he must be doing something wrong.

“It is no business of ours, if they did,” he tells Fingon, loud enough to be heard clearly by every man present. His heart is hammering again, but that at least he does not think anyone else can hear. Turgon, who was being held back from Fingon by two men gripping his arms, looks wide-eyed from his father to his brother but for once holds his tongue. He at least does not look injured, only shaken. 

Fingon—Fingon looks betrayed. 

“Let him up,” Fingolfin orders. He wishes, suddenly, that he had thought to put his shoes on after all, as every eye fixes on him. “He is my son; I will take responsibility for him.”

“He belongs in jail,” one of the men retorts, with a vicious glare towards Fingon. “And you were lying then, earlier; you were friends with those murderers as well as family. You are the same as them.”

“And deserve the same,” the man with the bloodied nose says thickly, pushing himself up to sitting.

Fingon tries to surge up at him, but he lists badly, and goes down again when one of the men kicks at his knee. Turgon lurches forward with a wordless yell, and Fingolfin—

“Stop!”

Fingolfin has actually taken a step forward before he remembers himself and turns, to see Finrod hurrying up, holding out his hands in a placating gesture. His nephew looks haggard, tired as Fingolfin has never seen him look tired. While the majority of their party retreated to self-imposed house arrest, and took what rest and food they could, Finrod has been out arranging audience with his grandfather and treating with the local constabulary. All this he has done alone, having turned down Galadriel’s impassioned plea to accompany him. The strain of it is writ pale upon his sun-browned face. 

“Let him up,” Finrod says, slowing his pace as he draws nearer. Behind him, two men jog to catch up: they are Telerin, with badges of office affixed awkwardly to their homespun collars and ancient guns buckled firmly into their holsters. As they approach, Finrod shakes his head. 

“I have been to the mayor’s office. He demands we hold the peace—that all of us, together, work to prevent further bloodshed. We are to remain in the inn,” he adds, this last for Fingolfin as his bright eyes seek him out across the square, “under guard, until further notice. Consider it an arrest, if you will. I will take charge of my cousin there and we shall not complain about the state of him—more than fair punishment, I think, for a bloodied nose.” 

He surveys the lot of them implacably, and when one man begins a hesitant protest, Finrod cuts him off. 

“Take it up with my grandfather the mayor, if you like,” he says coolly, “and you shall know where to find me if he says that I lie. But in meantime let me carry out his orders and take my cousins—both my cousins—into my custody. Please, let us have no more violence. Turgon, collect his things.”

Turgon pulls free from the men beside him, who glower but let him go. He stoops, and Fingolfin realizes those are the contents of Fingon’s medical bag, scattered across the stones at his feet in a wide-flung disorder: needles and jars and rolls of bandages. No one moves to stop him.

Finrod leaves his hands raised warily a moment longer, even as his eyes lock with Fingon’s, but then he hastens the last few steps to his cousin’s side and he is cupping Fingon’s face in his hands, turning his head slightly to frown at the gash in his scalp. 

“Oh, Fingon,” he sighs, and he smiles but sadly as he presses a kiss lightly to Fingon’s bloodied brow. “It is my medical opinion that you are in need of immediate bedrest, and a doctor to take a look at that cut. Come along.”

“‘M a doctor,” Fingon slurs, swaying as the Teleri finally let him go and step aside, and Finrod plucks a dusty handkerchief from his jacket pocket that he uses to blot away his cousin’s tears before he folds it and presses it firmly to the bleeding cut. 

“I know, my dear, I know,” he says kindly, and he puts one of Fingon’s arms over his shoulders, steadying him as he looks around at all the men gathered and silent. He glances at the fisherman who is now shakily getting to his feet, the blood from his nose masking his entire front. 

“Someone bring him along to get patched up too,” Finrod says to the crowd at large. When no one moves, Fingolfin steps forward, and clears his throat.

“Give Fingon to me,” he tells his nephew, stiffly. “And you help that fellow there.”

*

“I won’t,” Fingon says thickly, around his swollen lower lip. Fingolfin recognizes that look of bullish anger; his eldest son is generally sweet-tempered, but when he finds the rare quarrel he determines to be worth his effort then his expression is always the same: jaw jutted, dark brows lowered, face flushed and defiant. This has been his way ever since he was a toddling curly-haired babe, with only the will and not the words to argue for his way. 

Fingon rarely picks a fight, but those he does choose he chooses to win. 

“You must,” Fingolfin says as sternly as he can, forcing his nervous hands still. Anaire gives him a warning look over Fingon’s shoulder, and then refocuses her attention on their son’s still-bleeding scalp wound. There had been, of course, no doctor to be found willing to examine an injured scion of the House of Finwe, so Finrod had resorted to raiding Fingon’s own medical kit for gauze and stinging disinfectant. Fingon has been tractable, at least, while Finrod was keeping him preoccupied with questions, but the third time his eloquent nephew fumbled his words with exhaustion Fingolfin sent him to check on Galadriel. The girl might be young, but she is sharp, and Fingolfin can trust she will understand her brother’s state at a glance and successfully convince him to rest. 

_(Fingolfin had tried to apologize, when he walked Finrod to the door, but his nephew had shaken his head wearily._

_“You gave him your money; I gave him my maps; we both gave him our trust. Please do not blame yourself, Uncle.”)_

With Turgon also departed to see to his wife, this leaves Fingolfin alone in his room with nothing to do but watch uselessly as Anaire finishes tending to Fingon’s injuries much better than Fingolfin could. His son winces, and picks at his bleeding knuckles. 

“They can beat me to death if they like, Father, but I won’t apologize. You didn’t hear him, he was—bragging about it, about how he—he shot Maedhros. Bragging like Celegorm bringing down a stag. Like he was a _trophy_.”

“Fingon, you know I loved Maedhros too, but if what they say is true—and it _is_ true, seemingly,” Fingolfin adds, forestalling Fingon’s protest, “then you cannot blame these people for any hurt they might have dealt him. Whatever was done, your cousin brought it upon himself.”

“He could be dead,” Fingon says, his voice a little choked. 

“Even so, it would be his own fault,” Fingolfin replies, pushing down his own grief. “But he lived to run with the rest of them, Fingon. Do not assume the worst.”

“How can I not? When I know Maitimo was _shot_ , and I am here too late, with all my medicines and my learning and—that man I went to see in town today, he was shot too, and he will die, I think. He has been suffering every day since—since the bridge, and even if I amputate tomorrow, he will likely die. Maglor doesn’t know anything about how to tend an injury like that, and they are God knows where by now, out in the wilderness. He could be dying right _now_.”

“Or he could be well on his way to healed,” Anaire says, setting aside the gauze. She rests her hands comfortingly on their son’s tense shoulders. “Maglor is not as great a fool as you seem to think, Fingon, and there is Celegorm, too, who knows not a little about field medicine. Maedhros was young and hale, when you parted, yes?”

Fingon is quiet a moment, then whispers, still looking at his hands: “He was—happy. He did not give any indication that he thought we should not meet again. Whatever happened here, Mama, I truly don’t think he knew, before—He can’t have known. Please don’t hate him.”

He glances up to Fingolfin, at that last, and the tears are back in his eyes, despite the hard set of his mouth.

_(No harm shall come to Fingon because of me, Feanor’s eldest son had said, and had smiled, as though sincerity were a thing to be feared; a faultline that even his charms could not quite paper over.)_

“I do not hate him,” Fingolfin says, heavily. “But take the bed, Fingon, and sleep a little if you can. I will see if there is any more food to be had, and any more news from Finrod, once he has refreshed himself. When you have rested, and eaten, we may speak further.”

*

This is Finrod’s news: 

Fourteen men slain, even more wounded. 

Losgar’s wagons stolen, Fingolfin’s money all stolen, the bridge burned to ash. 

Nerdanel, left behind and half mad with grief, kept now under guard in the town’s clinic. 

Olwe, a day later, sending an armed escort for both Fingolfin and his eldest son, and no other word.

*

When the summons comes, Fingolfin does his best to make his hasty toilet before departing the inn to meet with his brother’s father-in-law, but there is only so much he can do. A damp comb to run through his hair; a basin of cold water to splash quickly upon his face; no fresh collar or shirt and a coat that Anaire does her best to brush out but which still looks like it has spent the preceding two days draped over the back of a chair. Standing stooped in his tiny room, both ready and unready, Fingolfin stares at his face in the small mirror over his room’s vanity, and tries to will himself to tranquility.

The reflection that stares back at him is one he has known all his life: the straight, proud nose; the high brow; the stern lips. The line of his jaw, the fall of his hair, the shape of his ears. The color, if not the shape, of his eyes, and the weary lines beneath them. 

If Feanor’s God had made him to be any less than he was, he would have made him Fingolfin. 

_(I was happy, his mother told him once, when he was fifteen and fragile and envious of Finarfin’s yellow hair. She laid one of her hands on his, and could not even fit their knuckles together any more, could no longer shield all his hand with her own. She had looked at the way his thin boy’s fingers were now nearly an inch longer than hers, and smiled, though there was a pain in her eyes that looked like loneliness, like she was missing him even though he was right there._

_She leaned forward and kissed him gently on the forehead, directly on the beauty mark he has borne since birth, hidden at the very edge of his hairline._

_Indis’ smile, Fingolfin had thought then and always, was the most beautiful in the world._

_I was so happy, she murmured, when I knew you looked more like Finwe than me.)_

*

Anaire kisses him farewell, and recombs his hair. She readjusts his poor limp collar, as well, but she does not fret; she smiles reassurance despite the concern she cannot quite conceal in her eyes, and her smile is also the loveliest thing Fingolfin knows, always has been, ever since he first saw her in the dance hall and felt how his nervous heart pinched when she looked his way.

He meets Fingon in the hall, and together they descend the steps and step outside into the sunlight where their guards are waiting.

*

Olwe does not stand to greet them, when Fingolfin and Fingon step through his office door. His hair, always fair enough to be mistaken as white, makes him look suddenly old; much older than the last time Fingolfin met him, at Galadriel’s christening.

Feanor had not been there, of course. Galadriel was baptized an Anglican.

“Fingolfin,” Olwe says, not discourteously. “And Fingon. My, how you have grown, boy.”

Fingon bows stiffly, but keeps his mouth shut. When Fingolfin takes the seat opposite Olwe at the mayor’s cluttered desk, his son stands beside him, hand on the back of his chair, fidgeting.

“I do not know why you have summoned us here, sir,” Fingolfin begins, with a breath, “but please allow me to seize the opportunity to make my apologies for what my half-brother has done. I am—grieved, sir. It is a disgrace I do not know how to bear, nor how to make amends for.”

“That is, partially, why I have summoned you.” Olwe leans forward a little across the desk, pressing his scarred hands together. “I heard about your . . . Disagreement, Fingon, with one of my men. I have here, on my desk, a written complaint he and his friends submitted to my office, demanding I throw you in the stocks. What have you to say in your defense?”

Fingolfin stiffens, and dares not look around to see what his son’s reaction is, but he can feel Fingon’s hands cease their restless movement.

“I am not sorry for hitting him,” is what Fingon says at last. “And were I to spend a whole week in the stocks I would not be any sorrier. But—I am sorry for what my cousins did. And I am sorry that boy’s father died. Henrik, was the boy’s name. I got word this morning, and—I truly tried to save him. I did the best I could.”

“Yes,” Olwe muses heavily. “That death will do even less to endear you to my people, I fear. Fingon, I will not punish you. I remember how you ran around with Feanor’s boys, when you were a child. But I ask that you remember that you are not a child any longer. However dear your friendship was, it must end here. For the safety of your family, and the stability of mine. Do you understand me?”

Fingon’s fingers tighten on the back of Fingolfin’s chair.

“Fingon,” Fingolfin says sharply, when his son stays silent.

“Yes, sir.” Fingon whispers. It is scarcely a whisper at all. Olwe’s stern expression does not soften. 

“Your cousins,” he says, clipped and careful, “are murderers and thieves. Whatever they were before does not trump that truth. You may be grieved by it; you may mourn them as dead, if that makes it easier for you. But you may not sympathize with them, not while both you and those you love remain within my town and among my people, sleeping beneath our roofs and eating of our food. This is a warning not because I wish to shame or hurt you, Fingon; it is because you are my daughter’s nephew, and your father has long been my friend. You have grown, since I saw you last, but you are still very young. I know young tempers run hot; still, I will have no more such displays as that which you made yesterday evening. Are we agreed?”

“Yes, sir,” Fingon says, hoarse and tight. The tension in him is like a wire pulled tight. 

“Very good,” Olwe says, nodding. “And now I have business to settle with your father, if you will be patient a moment longer.”

“If I may excuse myself,” Fingon mutters, dropping his hand from Fingolfin’s chair, “I shall wait for my father in the hall.”

He scarcely waits for Olwe’s nod, and does not meet Fingolfin’s eyes as he steps to the side to sketch the slightest of bows. Fingolfin watches him, heartsick; Fingon had not told him that his patient died.

Fingon slams his way out of Olwe’s study; Fingolfin can hear him storming away down the hall. He looks helplessly at his friend.

“I am sorry. He is not usually this way.”

“Nor are we.” Olwe sighs, and pinches the bridge of his nose briefly like he is trying to stem a headache. “Fingolfin, I know you are blameless, in this matter. But all my people know is that you too are Finwe’s son. I cannot help you.”

“I know.” Fingolfin lifts his chin, fighting for some semblance of pride, as he meets Olwe’s gaze squarely and he says, in a voice that does not tremble: “I am not ashamed that I am Finwe’s son.”

Olwe’s gaze does not soften. But he does say, in a voice a little kinder than it was, “Your father was a good man.”

In the silence after, Fingolfin does not sob.

“What will you do now, Fingolfin?” Olwe asks presently. “If you need money to return to New York, I can provide you with a loan privately, which you may pay back once you are resettled—”

“I am not returning to New York.”

He hears the words before he realizes he has spoken, and realizes, too late, that he cannot recall them. Realizes, too late, that he made the decision days ago, made it as soon as he realized what Feanor had done.

Olwe’s expression is unreadable. Fingolfin draws a breath, gathers his thoughts.

“I cannot go back. I have nothing left there. My properties, my holdings—everything, I sold. And now the funds I earned with those sales is also gone. What would you have me do; to crawl back shamefaced to beg charity from my younger brother, or from my widowed mother? I could not bear it.”

“Careful with that pride, son,” Olwe says, softly. Fingolfin feels the flush creeping up his face, and shakes his head.

“It is not pride. It is—If I go back now, Feanor shall never have to answer for what he has done.” 

“We have sent word to neighboring towns with orders to extend westward. Notices will be posted, local constabularies shall be looking—“

“No one shall know him, where he is going,” Fingolfin counters, “and he shall arrive before the news does.” 

Olwe sighs, but does not contest that point. Silence widens like ripples in still water—or like distance over a running river, with charcoal at its banks. 

“And more than that, I have to be the one,” he says, dully. “I have to be the one who asks him why he did what he did, and to get an answer.” 

“What of his sons?”

“From them I shall also have my answer,” Fingolfin says, but he is truly thinking only of one; of Maedhros, with his frightened eyes and smiling mouth, promising to do better. 

Olwe is silent a long time, eyes lowered in thought, but when he raises his gaze he looks not angered but saddened, somehow fatherly in a way that reminds Fingolfin, in an instant of stolen breath, of Finwe.

“Very well: go West, then,” he says. “Follow your brother, and may you find what you seek from him. But I shall not say God go with you, Fingolfin; I cannot.”

Fingolfin manages a very small smile, and bows his head.

“I know,” he says. “God forgive me; I know.”

*

_A long distant summer, a long-ago morning: a parlor papered blue and white. On the polished wooden floor, dangerously near the decorative glass-topped table, a little boy tries to coax a toy from his baby brother’s stubbornly closed fist._

_(Feanor calls them both babies, usually, even though Fingolfin is six, and Finarfin is only three. Even though Feanor himself is only eight.)_

_Fingolfin is usually happy to share with his baby brother, only Finarfin has Fingolfin’s most precious toy this time: a felted black horse with white socks on three of its cunning little feet and polished black glass as its eyes and a tail of real horsehair, bristly and soft together when rubbed between finger and thumb. Finarfin is not a bad brother usually, but he will still put things in his mouth, and he will still refuse to understand that he cannot not play with this one, lest he damage it. Fingolfin is not a baby no matter what Feanor says, and so will not cry, but his vexation forces him dangerously close to the brink, as he reasons and reasons with Finarfin and still his brother will not let the little horse go._

_It was given me by Feanor, he hisses, again and again. You may have my soldiers instead, or my flute. But Feanor gave me—_

_Finarfin’s infant heart remains untouched by this argument, and he keeps hold of the horsehair tail and the one black leg, scowling. Fingolfin, in near despair, does not dare run to find their Mother to resolve the situation because in his absence who can tell what horrors Finarfin might do to the horse? In his moment of extremity, frustrated and furious, he shoves at Finarfin, who tumbles back, eyes wide, striking against the table with a sharp crack._

_Sudden steps, pausing in the doorway. Fingolfin whirls about, terrified that it is his father standing there, or his mother looking shocked, but: it is Feanor. His curling hair is tied back, and his hands are full of papers and books, his drafting tools balanced precariously atop the stack. There is a grease pencil balanced behind his ear._

_He frowns, taking in the situation at a glance: Finarfin outraged and pouting, Fingolfin white-faced and guilty. The tiny horse lying three-legged on the floor, its broken leg clutched in Finarfin’s hand._

_Fingolfin, Feanor says, with crushing scorn, before carrying on his way down the hall: Do stop being cruel to him; you will make him cry._

*

_July 30, 1851_

_Dear Brother—_

_I have written and rewritten this letter seeking the proper words, yet I begin to realize that there are none to be had. Therefore, let me tell you plainly, and not attempt to soften the blow: Feanor has betrayed me. We arrived safely to Alqualonde some days ahead of schedule, after an uneventful journey from New York, but neither our brother nor his sons remained here to greet us. Instead, they have fled already westward with all the funds I entrusted to their keeping, leaving our entire party stranded. Worse yet, they burned the single bridge spanning the river, so that we may not follow. And worst of all, they stole not only from me but from the people here, and when their theft was discovered they killed fourteen men, before escaping._

_I am sorry to be the one to tell you this. Rest assured, at least, that my wife and children are safe, as are your son and daughter. Yes: I know you must have realized this, by now, but Artanis is indeed a runaway, and much regretting her rashness now, I shouldn’t wonder. Still, I pray you forgive her: in this dark turn she has provided much diversion and comfort to my own Aredhel, and for that I am grateful._

_Feanor and all his sons are, as I said, now wanted murderers, but Nerdanel remains here in Alqualonde. I have not yet seen her, though I understand she is in fragile health currently. Our poor sister! the shock must have been very great, to lose all her family at once, and in such a way. Anaire hopes soon to be permitted to visit her in hospital, and I shall send word on her condition once I know more. I shall endeavor to persuade Artanis to remain with her, and accompany her back to New York, once she is strong enough for the journey._

_For here is my own confession, dear brother: Despite this fiasco, I am determined to continue West. My children feel the same, as does Finrod, and, I fear, Artanis. There are arrangements still to be made, on the matter, but I at least shall not be returning to New York. I said, Finarfin, that I wished to make a new beginning, after our father’s death, and I meant it; and I mean it still, even now. The world is wide, and not all of it is Feanor’s. I shall go in seek of a new home in new lands, and if I do return I shall come to you not ashamed, but with my head held high. This, I think, is what our father would have wanted for me._

_Please comfort our mother, and bear my condolences to your wife; I am specially grieved to think of how she shall take the news of Feanor’s crimes against her kin. I have spoken with her father, and he has treated us all with great kindness; I have also done what I can to provide aid to the survivors here, but I have no money left. If it please you to send funds for the rebuilding to Olwe, instruct him to forward the debt to me, and I will be certain to pay you back in full once I am well established in California. There is gold to be had, in the west; that, at least, is a truth that has not yet shewn itself to be a lie._

_I miss you. I love you. I will write again when I can._

_Your Affectionate Brother,  
Fingolfin_

_P.S.: I am enclosing with this note a letter from your son, unopened. Artanis bids me send her love also, but as we have exhausted our supply of paper, she demands that you content yourself with imagining the embrace and kisses she sends to both you and Earwen until I can acquire more. -F_


	3. Chapter 3

“How are you feeling, my dear?” Anaire asks, hesitantly, and Nerdanel smiles as though the effort exhausts her. It likely does. 

“I am better than I was,” Nerdanel replies, her poor smile dying almost at once. She is sitting up, in her narrow bed, and her hair has been washed and combed but not bound up. Her hands fidget a little in her lap, and Anaire tries very hard not to look for the presence—or absence—of a wedding band. Beside Anaire, Aredhel sits as stiffly as she has ever sat in church, stonefaced and longsuffering. Across from her, reaching to take his aunt’s wrist and check the pulse there, is Fingon. His bruises from the fight two days ago have developed into a spectacular black eye, but Nerdanel has not asked how he came by the injury. Anaire cannot quite decipher to herself whether her sister-in-law’s silence on the subject incenses her or not. 

“Are you eating well?” Fingon asks, not looking up from where he is frowning at the face of his pocketwatch, as he measures his aunt’s heartbeats. 

“I eat,” Nerdanel replies softly. Fingon’s frown deepens, and now he does lift his gaze, his father’s expression of concern settled sharp between his brows. 

“And your sleep?”

“Oh,” says Nerdanel, with a lightness that belies the way she does not look directly at him: “when I first came here all I did was sleep; I slept until I wearied of it! Now I do not sleep at all.”

Anaire, watching, thinks Nerdanel looks rather like her favorite son had looked, on an evening years ago when he paid an unexpected call at the house, asking for Fingon. Eyes too dark in a face too white, too large in a face too thin. 

Fingon had been away on a housecall at the time, newly busy the week after he acquitted himself so admirably at the Exhibition, and her husband had taken all her other children to a dinner party hosted by one of his more important business associates. Anaire had invited her eldest nephew in for tea despite that, but it had been an uncomfortable, short visit. He had been restless, his smiles never nearing laughter the way his best smiles always did, his fingers unable to still their agitated pleating of his napkin. He had been taken ill, he had confessed when she asked, but he was better now, much recovered, thank you—he had thought, when taking his constitutional, that he might catch Fingon at home, and there apologize to him for—well. 

_Apologize? Do you mean to say you have wronged my son? She had asked, only half-jesting._

And he, fingers going finally still as he looked up at her with a gaze that was, despite his placid brow, piteously tragic: _No, aunt, it is only—I fear I have disappointed him. I should like to tell him I am sorry for it._

It was very soon after that that he had gone away again, taking her hand distractedly to kiss her farewell, and leaving his tea scarcely drunk. She heard him collecting his hat with fumbling hands in the hallway, and his cane from its stand by the door. She had heard him wish the footman goodnight before the front door closed. 

It had been the first and only time Anaire had been sorry to see him go.

*

“And how do—how do you do, here?” Nerdanel asks bravely, after a pause. It is a bravery made pitiful by its hesitancy. 

“How do you think?” Aredhel replies sharply, before Anaire or Fingon can formulate an answer. “Look at my brother’s face!”

Fingon flushes, and pretends he did not hear.

“Aredhel,” Anaire cries, mortified. “Apologize to your aunt at once. I did not bring you here for you to be uncivil.”

Aredhel, her jaw jutting angrily, opens her mouth for words that Anaire is horribly certain will not be an apology at all, but she is forestalled from further embarrassment by Nerdanel raising one hand, shaking her head.

“No, Anaire, I am the one who must apologize. You have been terribly wronged, and I am sorry—so dreadfully sorry. I play over the events of that night, again and again, trying to see where I went wrong. There must have been a—a way to stop them. Somehow, I did not find it, and it is not—fair—not right, that you should suffer for my failure. Fingon, Aredhel—pray allow me to ask for your forgiveness, also. I know this must be worst for you, for you were always—so good, to my sons.”

Aredhel’s angry chin suddenly trembles, and she swipes furiously at her eyes, ducking her head. She has not said Celegorm’s name since Finrod broke the full news of what happened, that night at the bridge.

Fingon, packing away his stethoscope, does not tremble. But Nerdanel reaches for him, on some motherly impulse and understanding that Anaire wishes she did not recognize, and stays him a moment with the touch of her fingers on his own wrist.

“You knew my son,” Nerdanel tells him, quietly. “You must know he did not wish to hurt you.”

Fingon stiffens, but does not shake off her hand. He does not ask which son she means. Neither, for that matter, does Anaire. 

“Is it true,” Fingon says at last, somewhat thickly, “that he killed people, that night?”

Nerdanel lifts her chin. Nods, just once. 

Fingon sees, and his face—always so expressive, even since babyhood—crumples. But he bears up bravely, regaining his composure so quickly Anaire could almost think she imagined it. 

“I thought,” he tells his aunt, “that I knew him. But I did not think only that he could not wish to hurt me; I thought he could not wish to hurt anyone.”

Anaire sees Nerdanel flinch, at that. She looks down at her hand, still resting on Fingon’s wrist, and hesitates; but then she sits up a little higher in her bed, leaning forward and taking his hand properly in both of hers, as though wishing to warm some paralytic chill she felt there, running through the narrow channel where his heart beats. 

“Fingon,” Nerdanel says, as still he does not move: “Please do not hate him.”

“That is the trouble of it,” Fingon replies, extricating his hand from her grip. He is not ungentle, but his eyes are fixed on the bedspread, and the bruise on his face is ghastly to look at, too dark to be healing, yet.

“That is the trouble of it, aunt. No matter how much I should—I can’t.”

*

Nerdanel does not try to defend Maedhros further: Maedhros, _Maitimo_ , her favorite boy, whom Anaire first met on the day he was christened Michael, twenty-three years ago now. It had been plain even then how Nerdanel doted on her her elfin-faced infant, her son who somehow took from her all the qualities she thought so plain in herself and made them beautiful. Her love had been more jealous even than Feanor’s, Anaire had thought then, and thought many a time since, too, on those increasingly rare occasions she saw mother and son together. Her first reaction, when she learned Maedhros was to move from Formenos to New York for his studies, was to wonder how Nerdanel could bear to let him go. 

Her favorite boy. Nerdanel likely did not even realize she loved any one of her sons best, but Anaire knew. 

(Or maybe Nerdanel did know it, now; now that she had lost him. Anaire supposes this is a Biblical truth, that loss can, sometimes, serve to better illuminate love. She was raised Catholic by her mother before she ever met the solemn-eyed boy who would be her husband, and grew from girlhood beneath the shadows of the cathedral statuary. This, the one sculpture that she always shied away from: marble-eyed and terrible, an agonized woman cradling the corpse of her son. Pieta, her mother had informed her piously, when she was young.)

(On more than one occasion, after a High Mass, Anaire had seen Nerdanel linger after the service to kneel with the white veil still drawn over her hair, praying at the dread statue’s feet in silence. On more than one occasion she had seen Maedhros kneeling beside her, his own bright curls uncovered. His blazing boy’s face had been beautiful in the candlelight, as he raised his face with equanimity and gazed without grief, without guilt, at the marble Mother’s carven tears.)

Anaire kept a Catholic home, but the candle of her faith has never burned as hotly as Feanor and his children burned, with a sacrificial flame that Anaire privately thought both proud enough and violent enough to be rather nearer Paganism than holiness. 

*

(It was Feanor’s family, and not Anaire, who taught Fingon the Marian prayers.)

(It was Maedhros.)

*

“Well, I do not care if you forgive Maedhros,” Aredhel says hotly, tossing back her dark hair as she glares at Fingon through brimming eyes. “I shall never forgive—I shall—Why, I shall hit him, when I see him again, I swear I shall. I shall give them all a thrashing, and Galadriel will help me.”

“Don’t be a fool, Irisse,” Fingon says with sudden sharpness, snapping his doctor’s bag shut with a click. “As if you could ever give Celegorm a thrashing.”

“I shall,” Aredhel retorts, but she pushes back her chair with an unhappy clatter as she leaps to her feet and hastens from the room, not bothering to farewell her aunt. Anaire would call her back, but she saw how her daughter was trying furiously, as she went, to hide how her face was suddenly wet with tears. Instead, she listens to Argon’s surprised yelp from the hall as the door bangs shut, and she looks helplessly at her sister-in-law.

“I am sorry,” she says weakly, her face burning a little with shame. “I did not bring her here to distress you, sister, but she is still very willful, and these last few days have been—very hard, on her. I will reprimand her.”

Nerdanel shakes her head.

“Let her alone, Anaire,” she says softly. “She has done nothing wrong.”

 _Nothing as wrong as murder,_ Anaire thinks before she can stop herself, and then bites her tongue, contrite. 

“Nothing wrong, perhaps,” she says, reaching for the bedside pitcher to refill Nerdanel’s water glass. “And yet still: it was thoughtless. I shall speak with her about it, tonight.”

*

The remainder of their visit is awkwardly concluded under a dismal cloud made all the heavier by Aredhel’s outburst and emotional departure. Fingon, a little stilted but still cordial, urges his aunt to rest; to send him word that he might mix her a draught of laudanum, if she still finds herself unable to sleep (“My—mentor cautions such medicines are to be used sparingly if at all, but surely what is most important is that you sleep, and I shall measure carefully, I assure you—“); to be sure to eat regular meals (“I would urge you to take tea or broth, if you are not hungry, that you might still keep up the habit of eating”); and to take a little exercise, if she can, by pacing about her room. The streets outside the clinic could still be unfriendly and even dangerous, to Feanor’s wife; if the window being open to sunlight and fresh air was all the freedom available to Nerdanel currently, she ought still to avail herself of both lest she relapse to her fever from being trapped indoors.

“I will not tell you not to offer yourself as a helper to the physician here, as I hear you have been doing,” Fingon says at last, as he reaches for his coat. “I think it is a good thing, to keep oneself busy during time of convalescence. Idle minds are more easily poisoned. But have a care of how much time you spend, in the bad air. And, if I might be bold enough to suggest it,” he adds, tugging a little at his cuffs and not looking at either woman in the room, “if such work is at all distressing to you, please desist. Your nerves are fragile, currently; if you are seeking out such work as a form of punishment or reparation for what was done by—my uncle and cousins, then that does you more harm than good. It was—not your fault. Focus only on getting well, aunt. And that,” he adds, after a pause, “is me speaking not as a physician, but as both your nephew who loves you, and as Maedhros’s—friend. If you believe he could not want to hurt me, then know I believe equally strongly that he could never want you to suffer.”

He looks up; his eyes and Nerdanel’s eyes meet. For a frozen instant, something passes between them that Anaire feels somehow excluded from: a kind of bereavement she has never felt, a guilt that she cannot share. But then Nerdanel nods, and it is like a spell is broken; Fingon gathers up his bag and his case and his hat, and with a little bow, he exits the room. In the silence of the room once he has gone, Anaire can hear the murmur of his voice in the hall as Argon asks a question—wanting, no doubt, to know if they are leaving the clinic and returning to the inn. Argon had volunteered stoutly to take Turgon’s place as bodyguard, when Turgon was torn between remaining to attend to his still-sickly new wife and accompanying his mother to the clinic. But Argon is still very much a child, at fourteen—more than Fingon ever was, because he is Anaire’s youngest. He will be relieved, Anaire knows, to be safely back at the inn. 

If Anaire is to be honest with herself—and she does, always, try to be honest, no matter the sting—she will also be relieved to be back with her husband and her children in their tiny, slope-ceilinged room. It is not home—it is nothing like home—but even if the safety there is only illusory it is all the comfort she has. It was a sense of duty, more than love, that compelled her to perform this errand of mercy and venture out with her eldest son into unfamiliar, unfriendly streets to offer Nerdanel her company. It is because of that same sense of duty that she lingers now, tongue-tied. She has never found it easy, even in happier times, to hold conversation with Feanor’s wife. 

(If Anaire is to be honest with herself, she has always felt herself to be an unworthy mother, and has both admired and envied how Nerdanel bore and birthed her children seemingly without any effort at all, raising each son to be exceptional, striking, and worshipfully devoted to her. Bright Maedhros, sensitive Maglor, brash Celegorm whom Aredhel loves. Awkward Caranthir, and Curufin with his preening boy’s cruelty. The Ambarussa: impish, whip-clever, already growing tall, and still: Nerdanel’s babies.

It would be easier to imagine Nerdanel without the red of her hair; without the craft of her hands; even without her husband, than it would be to imagine her without her children. And yet this is the ugly truth of it, stark and ugly in the empty room now that Fingon has gone: they are all of them gone too, utterly, and they shall never come back. Nerdanel is not yet strong enough for travel, and she is left penniless; the uncomfortable truth they do not discuss plainly is that when she does take again to the road it will be only to return to New York, alone, to beg of Indis’s charity. Maedhros, at least, and perhaps even some others, would likely hang if Nerdanel were ever to see them again in the East. If she is to think them safe, then, she must think them gone beyond recall, into a wild world that will not be kind to them. And the twins are not even fourteen.

(Anaire, foolish and too kind, tries to imagine how it would feel, to lose Argon.) 

(She can’t.) 

*

“So you are to follow after my husband,” Nerdanel says, into the stillness. It is not a question, in her voice. “My husband, and my sons. Do you hope to overtake them?”

“I hope nothing,” Anaire replies, twisting her fingers together upon her lap. “But Fingolfin, I think—he wants a reckoning. What exactly he hopes the shape of that to take, I do not know. I do not think that even he knows.”

“If he finds he wishes to strike Feanor across the face, as your daughter wishes to do to my son,” Nerdanel tells her with sudden energy, “you may tell him he has my blessing. Everything that has happened—everything, was his doing. I did not realize the hold he had on the boys, until it was too late. Did they tell you how he seized me full in sight of all our sons, and how he locked me away?”

They had. When Anaire tells her so, Nerdanel nods, and is quiet for a moment.

“Caranthir spoke to me through the lock,” she says, thinly. “He was the only one. But he would not open the door.”

Anaire knows not what to say, to that. 

She is saved from choosing words by a tentative knock at the sickroom door, and the creak as it pushes slightly open.

“Mama,” Argon says, and both women look up to see his ruddy face peering hesitantly through the crack: “Fingon has gone downstairs, and he is anxious to be away, but Papa said I must not let Fingon go anywhere alone. I called for him to wait, but I do not know that he will listen, please come, I think Irisse has gone already—“

“Go down to tell Fingon I am coming,” Anaire says, drawing a deep breath that pinches her shoulderblades against the back of her chair. “And stay Aredhel, if she is still there; if she has gone then it cannot be helped, but her father will need to have words with her, later. Do not worry, Fingon will not leave you to guard me alone. Run along, _mon ange_! I shall follow in a moment.”

Argon, looking doubtful, obediently closes the door. In the abrupt, renewed silence, Anaire looks to the woman in the bed, unsure of what to say in what might be their last farewell, and finds Nerdanel already gazing back at her. The pain is so immense in her eyes that Anaire’s breath catches in her throat. It is the pain of parting, and yet more than this; the pain of being left alone in an unfriendly room, while Anaire departs with all her children about her.

As if realizing she has betrayed her feelings, Nerdanel turns her face down towards her hands, drawing a shuddering breath. Anaire leans forward.

“Nerdanel,” she begins, and stops, because even she can hear the pity in her voice. She reaches out, takes Nerdanel’s clever, quiet hands in her own, heavy on the coverlet. Nerdanel lets her. Her hands are square and wide-knuckled; they are callused like a serving maid’s.

“Sister,” she begins again. “Is there anything I can bring you, before I go? Is there anything you need?”

“Nothing,” Nerdanel whispers. When she looks up her eyes have filled with water, but she smiles bravely. “Anaire—sister—thank you for visiting. Now—please. Go, and—see to your children.”


	4. Chapter 4

_“What sort of book do you have there, Argon?”_

_Argon, blinking, twists up to look for the source of the voice. He does not have to look far to find it: his eldest cousin Maitimo has the last hour been settled comfortably on the drawing room sofa with Fingon, conversing animatedly about some sort of soirée he attended the previous weekend that he found amusing. Argon, sprawled on his belly on the thick carpet behind the sofa, deeply engrossed in his novel, had not noticed Fingon leave the room. He had not even realized Maitimo knew he was in the room._

_Yet there is his cousin’s unmistakable grin, even slanted almost upside down, as he cranes his head over the back of the sofa to peer at Argon’s book. He is tall enough he_ can _lean so, his red hair all mussed and fallen sideways across his face. No one else in Argon’s family is so tall, not even Father. No one else has ever intruded over the back of the sofa into his private space._

_Argon realizes, belatedly, that he is gaping. Mercifully, Maitimo does not seem to notice._

_“It is a French novel,” he replies at last, swallowing. “Dumas.”_

_“Oh? Which one.”_

_“_ Le Comte de Monte Cristo. _”_

_“Oh indeed! That’s an adventurous one. Have you read it before?”_

_“No, sir. Though I have read others.”_

_“Are you enjoying it?”_

_Argon nods._

_“Hum.” Maitimo rearranges himself on the sofa, so that he must be kneeling up on the cushions, his elbows resting easily on the mahogany back as though he were leaning up against a balcony rail. “What other sort of authors do you enjoy reading, then? Hugo?”_

_“I do not read only French. I like Scott’s adventure yarns too, and Cooper.”_

_“Have you read any Dickens yet?”_

_Argon had not._

_“I shall have to bring you one to try. Dickens is not terribly like Scott, as he writes adventure stories about the present day, not the past, but I promise you that you shall love him. Look, I shall bring you my copy of_ Oliver Twist _. It is one I let Fingon borrow, when he was about your age. He has since told me it is his favorite. I can slip it to you next time I visit, as a secret, if you like, and you can surprise him once you’ve done reading it.”_

_Argon does like the idea of that very much, though he finds he is too shy to say so. Thankfully, Maitimo seems to perceive his enthusiasm anyway, and nods decisively, as he leans forward a little to more fully observe Argon’s hiding place._

_“You shall have to tell me what he says. I must say, Argon, this is a fine little berth you have for yourself here. Are those little tea cakes in the corner there? On the atlas.”_

_They are. Argon likes squirreling away his favorite treats here, so he might eat them while he reads. After a moment’s agony, he offers one to his cousin, but Maitimo grandly waves him away._

_“Fingon has gone in search of more tea things,” he explains. “You can keep those for yourself. I wish I had a secret little reading space half as nice as this at home, Argon. None of my brothers particularly like to read, except for Celegorm. The twins like stories if_ I _tell them, they say, but they won’t sit still long enough to read any on their own. Maybe they would, if I told them you are clever enough to have read all of these—“ this last he illustrates with a sweeping gesture towards the stacks of books Argon has lined up carefully against the wall._

_“You can tell them if you like, sir,” Argon says, carefully. Maitimo smiles again, and shakes his head._

_“And you know you don’t need to call me sir, don’t you, Argon? I’m not quite as old and impressive as that, I promise you.”_

_“I have found more biscuits!” Fingon announces triumphantly as he renters the room, and Maitimo immediately twists back around, leaving Argon frozen behind the sofa._

_“Millicent shall send someone in with more tea, also, and fresh cups, once she has a minute,” Fingon continues to prattle, as Argon sees his slippered feet advance trippingly over the blue rug and then pause, mid-step._

_“What were you doing behind the sofa?”_

_“Nothing,” Maitimo says blithely. “I was only stretching my shoulder; I daresay I twinged some muscle or another in fencing yesterday. I am sure it shall be right again tomorrow. Here,_ cano _; let me help you with the tray.”_

*

Here is the truth: Argon does not _try_ to eavesdrop. It is only that there is so little space where he is allowed even in the inn, and Mama is sleeping in one room while Aredhel rudely shooed him out of the other, and so he was left no recourse but to pad softly to Turgon and Elenwe’s bedchamber—softly, and quietly, lest Elenwe also be sleeping. Elenwe is often sick, lately, but her sickness is not like Mama’s. Argon has his own suspicions about _that_. 

Anyway: he creeps down the narrow, low-ceilinged hallway to Turgon’s door, and when he presses his ear to the keyhole to listen for anyone awake inside he cannot help but overhear:

“—To have it out plainly, I wish to say that I know that, in marrying me, you must have thought you were gaining a position of—security. Things are very different now than a few days ago, and I want to assure you, Elenwe, that if you—if you wish to remain here, and seek an annulment, I shall not argue. I cannot leave you any money,” he adds hastily, sounding not like grumpy Turgon at all, “not anything near enough for you both to live upon, not under the current circumstances. But I am certain Finrod could help get you a position—“

“But you will not stay with me,” Elenwe replies, her voice thick. 

“I did not say that.”

“Still, it is the truth.”

A pause. 

Argon breaks the pause by knocking upon the bedroom door. There is a muffled exclamation from Turgon and a hasty squeak of bedsprings, and then the door cracks open, and one of Turgon’s sharp grey eyes peeps through.

“Oh! Thank God,” he announces with a peculiar tone of mingled disgust and relief, as he swings the door further open, “it is only Argon.”

“I do not mean to intrude,” Argon says bravely, drawing himself up to face that elder-brother glare with equanimity, “but there is nowhere else for me to go. Father is seeing about the wagons with Finrod, and Mama is asleep.”

“Go trouble Aredhel and Galadriel, then,” suggests Turgon. But Elenwe, behind him, raises her voice.

“Don’t be cruel to him, Turgon! Argon, do come in and sit beside me, if you would.”

Obediently, Argon ducks into the room under the barring lintel of Turgon’s outstretched arm, and trots to his sister-in-law’s bedside. There is only one chair, but Argon can guess Turgon really will throw him out of the room if he takes his brother’s vacated seat, so he perches on the very edge of Elenwe’s coverlet instead. 

“How are you feeling, sister?” Argon inquires politely. Elenwe looks very wan, and her eyes are a little watery, but she smiles.

“I am well,” she assures him, with a queer, darting look towards Turgon, who is closing the door with ill grace. 

“You have not been eating.”

“Are you Argon, or Fingon?” She asks teasingly, swallowing with obvious discomfort. She draws a deep, quick breath. “I shall eat when I feel hungry, of course. Don’t worry about me.”

“Argon, do trust me to take proper care of my own wife’s health, thank you,” Turgon interjects, slumping down into his chair again. “And whatever is vexing you, have it out and be done with it and then go back with the girls, won’t you? We were in the middle of discussing something important.”

Argon was not planning on saying his suspicions aloud—not yet, at any rate. But Turgon’s manner irritates him so that he suddenly has no qualms at all about settling more comfortably on the bed, folding his arms, and looking his older brother squarely in the face.

“It is a baby, isn’t it,” Argon says, watching Turgon’s expression. 

Turgon’s expression tells him everything he needs to know, and more besides.

“Oh, God,” Turgon says shakily, after he has remastered himself. “Oh, my God. How—“

“You are married,” Argon explains, very pleased with himself. “And Elenwe has been unwell in mornings for over a week, now. It is very exciting to think of being an uncle,” he adds as a peace offering, for Turgon’s color had now remained ghastly pale long enough to be concerning rather than amusing. He turns around to beam at Elenwe. “Is your confinement soon? Does Fingon know?”

“Of course Fingon does not know!” Turgon exclaims in a hiss. Elenwe tries to smile, swallows again, and looks past Argon to his brother.

“Dear one,” she says, very calmly but in a very small voice: “I am afraid I am about to be sick.”

Argon leaps up to fetch her the tin washbasin. When she retches into it, he does the courtesy of averting his eyes and holding her hair back, as he has done on some occasions for his mother.

Turgon still looks as though he also might need a basin, but he raises a trembling hand to worry at the barren place on his lip where a mustache might be and he maintains his composure.

“Christ, Argon,” he mutters, still staring at Argon. “ _Christ._ ”

“I think you should call for Fingon,” Argon tells him contritely. “He might be able to make her feel better, like he helps Mama. I can run and fetch him for you, if you would like.”

_That_ suggestion almost raises Turgon from his chair.

“No! Don’t tell Fingon—yet. I want to be the one to tell him. It is—my surprise, Argon. It is mine and Elenwe’s, and don’t you go spoiling it, hey?”

“I won’t,” Argon replies, a little stung at the insinuation that Turgon could think him capable of such a selfish act. Elenwe coughs miserably into the basin. “It isn’t any of my business. But I think he will want to know sooner rather than later, so he might be of better assistance. Especially as we are setting out tomorrow. You are—both coming, aren’t you?”

Sudden doubt strikes him, as he looks between the two of them.

Elenwe straightens up, gulping to catch her breath, and blinks her watery eyes.

“Argon. You truly are happy, to be an uncle? You truly mean it?”

“Of course I mean it,” he says. “And Fingon shall be delighted; you know how he is always staying late at Mass to coo over babies. I mean—That is to say, he was always used, to doing those sort of things.”

(There is no Catholic church in this town, nor even a chapel—not that they would have been permitted to attend any kind of service anyway, of course. Fingon has, surprisingly, not even complained about the lack.)

Elenwe still does not look comfortable, but she does smile. 

“We are both coming with you,” she tells him. “Do not trouble about that. But please do listen to your brother, won’t you, and let him tell Fingon about the—the baby? And your parents, too.”

Argon agrees readily, and Turgon, now a little pink, fumbles forward to retrieve the basin to be emptied. Once he has slipped surreptitiously out into the hallway, Argon takes Elenwe’s wrist in his hand—with her permission—to feel for the pulse as Fingon has shown him. He can feel her heart beating, but he does not of course have the learning needed for reading its lines like a book.

“What is the diagnosis, doctor?” Elenwe asks, gravely. Argon follows her cue and puts on his best Fingon impression, jutting out his chin and furrowing his brow as he nods sagely.

“My diagnosis is that madam is alive,” he informs her seriously, “but to be certain I shall have to seek a second opinion.”

Elenwe laughs, not quite covering her mouth with her free hand. She has a very nice laugh, full and hearty and not at all like the gentlewomen who titter behind their gloves and fans as they make eyes at . . . Various men. Argon, seeing Elenwe laugh for the first time, wonders if this free sort of mirth is what made his brother fall in love with her. It makes a strange sort of sense, considering how stodgy Turgon can be.

“Oh Argon,” she says, as the laugh fades from her face, “I do hope you are correct about Fingon and our . . . Surprise.”

He sets her hand gently back on the bedspread and pats it reassuringly.

“Of course I am. At least it is a _nice_ surprise, unlike all the other ones lately.”

*

Argon spends the remainder of the afternoon with Turgon and Elenwe, as his brother upon returning with the now-cleaned basin no longer seems so eager to evict him from the room. There is not much to do, as most of Fingolfin’s grand library was left behind in their New York home and Turgon is an exceedingly dull card player. Argon did pack a single book for the road to Alqualonde, but he has left it buried at the bottom of his pack, wrapped in a scarf to disguise it. Selfish, perhaps; but Argon cannot bear to think of it being sold as so many of their possessions have been sold, to fund their forward travel.

It is as evening begins to stretch and open its dark eyes that there comes another knock at the bedroom door. Elenwe, who had fallen into a light doze, stirs awake and looks a little queasy; Turgon tosses aside his losing hand of whist and pushes himself up to his feet.

Before he can reach the door, however, there comes a brisk announcement from the hallway: “Turgon, it’s your sister, I’m coming in.”

“Aredhel! What are you—“

“It’s Fingon.” Aredhel announces as she strides into the room, taking a moment to look not at all impressed by the sight of poor Elenwe sitting among the bedclothes with an empty washbasin. Privately, Argon thinks Elenwe is a rather nicer sort of sister than Aredhel, though he would not dare to tell the former so in front of the latter. 

“He’s gone out again. Can you go fetch him back, Turgon? Mama is still sleeping, but if she wakes up to find him gone, she will worry, and she needs proper rest before we get back on the road tomorrow. Lord knows I shall miss having real pillows and sheets, and I don’t even _mind_ camping.”

“He is going to drive himself mad,” Turgon says, standing up. Aredhel’s lips tighten, and she shakes her head.

“If he does, we all know who is to blame,” she retorts, and tosses her hair as she leaves the room, head high. Turgon sighs as he makes to follow, but then his eyes narrow and he hesitates, looking back around at Argon.

“Argon, you had best come with me to fetch him. Go retrieve your coat. Or, no—I shall fetch the coat. You head straight downstairs, please, and wait for me at the door.”

*

They find Fingon where Turgon’s first hunch said he would be: at the river’s edge, between the charred and blasted holes in the earth that show where the missing bridge’s posts used to be. Fingon crouches on the blackened ground, watching the water, and he does not stir at the sound of their approach. 

“You ought to take more care,” Turgon remarks, as he draws near. “We might have been anyone, just now.”

“Not anyone,” Fingon says, not turning around. There is a bitterness in his voice that makes Argon pause.

Turgon takes another step, but he doesn’t say anything. He is moving cautiously, as though he does not want to startle their elder brother, which is peculiar when Fingon already knows they are there. 

“Everyone says they saw him here,” Fingon says suddenly, in a small, strange voice. 

“I know,” Turgon says. Charcoal crunches beneath his boots as he crouches down beside their elder brother, unusually quiet. It is as though he is waiting for Fingon to say something more, but Fingon only sits there, hunched like he is warding off a chill despite the mild, balmy evening. Sometime in the last two days he traded his tall gentleman’s hat for a wide-brimmed felt monstrosity, better suited for the sun and dust of travel but ugly nonetheless. It is on the riverbank beside him now, thoughtlessly set aside. The felt is almost black where the fretful water has lapped it.

Argon has an irrational hatred for that hat. It does not look like something a doctor ought to wear.

“Fingon,” Turgon says at last, putting a single awkward hand on Fingon’s bowed shoulder. “Father does not want you here alone, on the last night. He worries about retaliation.”

“Oh, hell,” Fingon sniffs, and buries his face in his hands. “I know. I was only thinking, that before I go, I should—I should apologize to the man I hit.”

“Yes, you should. But no time for that, now. Come on, come back to the room with me, and get some sleep before we have to load up. Please. Look, you are worrying Argon.”

Argon helpfully tries to look worried. It is not difficult; his chest feels too tight for his heart, as he stands looking down at his brothers there at the river’s edge. He doesn’t like feeling this large beside them.

Fingon lets Turgon help him to his feet. He moves stiffly, like his legs have gone cold from sitting by the water so long, and Argon wonders how long he _has_ been here. What has his eldest brother been thinking about, to make his voice so sad? 

(Argon knows, deep down, what Fingon has been thinking about: pictures, and voices, and laughter, and all of them one person. But this he knows, too: He cannot say what he knows, any more than he can tell Fingon, privately, that _I miss him too. I loved him too. He promised he would teach me how to best the twins in a fight, though there are two of them and only one of me. He promised me he would loan me his copy of your favorite Dickens novel, the one about a boy nearly my size. He said once I had read it, I ought to surprise you by asking you about it. I still have not read it, even though I asked Papa for my own copy after Grandpapa’s funeral, because I was—waiting—_ )

“Fingon,” Argon says, stooping hurriedly forward, “your hat.”

He holds up the ugly, dripping thing from where he plucked it from the bank. His brother takes it numbly, like he scarcely sees it.

Instead, Fingon looks at Argon for the first time, and smiles a very small smile, despite the telltale marks of tears stiff on his face. It is strange that the tear marks are what make Fingon look brave, all at once, but—they do. Argon smiles back, but unhappily. It is the best he can do.

Turgon does not smile, looking at them both. He looks preoccupied by something, whatever thoughts he is turning over making him look much older than he is. Maybe he is thinking about how he shall surprise Fingon, with his news. Argon wishes that he would do it now, to shake off this awful heart sickness and make Fingon honestly happy again—for Argon knows Fingon really will be happy, to know he is an uncle—but Turgon stays quiet and so Argon does too.

“Hullo, Argon,” says Fingon with a valiant effort at brightness: “I had thought you were with Aredhel and Artanis.”

“They don’t want me,” Argon shrugs, folding his arms. Fingon’s brows tuck close together, and he holds out one arm, so that Argon must unfold his own arms again and accept the embrace. Fingon is still more than a hand taller than him, so that Argon’s head leans not against his shoulder but against the strong line of his upper arm, warm and sturdy even beneath his coatsleeve. Argon used to be a little envious of how Grandmama said Fingon reminded her so much of Grandpapa when he was younger, but ever since she told him he looks a lot like Papa, he has not minded so much. 

“Well, _I_ want you,” Fingon says, the words fluttering soft and warm through the crown of Argon’s hair. “And Turgon does too, don’t you, Turgon?”

“Oh, I suppose,” Turgon says with a tone closer to his usual wryness, but he has not pulled away from Fingon’s arm either, despite the sodden hat in Fingon’s hand. It is almost, for a moment, as though they are all three of them tucked in a closed and secretive space, arms wrapped in each other’s arms and feet jumbled against each other’s feet, faces close—though Argon must crane his head back a little to see Fingon properly, at this angle. One day, hopefully soon, Argon shall be at least as nearly as tall as the both of his brothers. If he is lucky, he shall be exactly Fingon’s size.

“ _Les Trois Mousquetaires,_ ” he mumbles, which is a very stupid thing to say. But Fingon laughs—a real laugh, this time, no matter how small—and when the laugh catches a little he pulls one arm free to rub at his eyes.

“I always fancied myself more a d’Artagnan,” he says, when he has caught his breath. “But I suppose I can be content to be _le Comte de la Fere_ , if it must be so.”

“Turgon is Aramis,” Argon says, in hopes of earning another laugh. He does, but he gets also a pointedly narrowed glare from Turgon. He supposes that is worth it. It is not Argon’s fault, if Turgon decided to throw himself as unreservedly into courting as if he were—

“That makes you Porthos,” Turgon grumbles meanly, and Argon smirks. 

“I _like_ Porthos.”

“You _would_.”

They troop back up to the inn together, and none of them turn to look back at the charcoal-banked river. Fingon takes a few deep, funny breaths, as they go, but he is otherwise quiet. Turgon is also quiet, until they reach the inn door. Argon steps inside first, and squints as he adjusts to the lower light, stamping his feet dutifully on the mat to shake off whatever debris remains on his feet. And here is the truth: Argon does not _mean_ to eavesdrop. But Fingon and Turgon linger on the doorstep, and when Fingon tries to step inside, Turgon stops him, with a single hand on his arm.

“Are you steady?” Turgon asks, in a low voice.

It is a strange question, but Fingon does not seem confused. Instead, he only nods—and then hesitates. 

“I am,” he says. “But even so—Despite what everyone says—Our aunt, and Finrod’s grandfather, and—and—“

He smiles a helpless sort of smile, and rubs at his eyes again, and shrugs.

“I know that he did it. I _know._ I just cannot—believe it.”

“I know you cannot,” Turgon says with unwonted calm, as if this is all only part of a conversation they were already having. But then he leans forward and kisses Fingon, just lightly, on the forehead. It is an awkward sort of kiss, because it is the kind that Argon has only ever received from Mama or Papa, never from his surly elder brother. The sort that means _It is going to be all right, despite everything._ You _are going to be all right._

(When Fingon finally steps across the threshold, Turgon following after, the cool-damp evening air follows them both.)

*

They depart town the next morning, in the barest, earliest blue-light of predawn. No one comes to see them off; not even Finrod’s grandfather, who wished him and Artanis a private farewell the previous night. They do not light lamps, to save lantern oil, and Argon rides in a wagon next to Elenwe by her request, his nodding chin propped upon the knapsack he cradles on his lap.

It is only once the sun has risen enough to warm the canvas walls, and once the shape of Alqualonde has receded to a meaningless smudge in the distance, that Argon pulls open his bag, unwraps his long-hoarded copy of _Oliver Twist_ , and begins to read.


End file.
